If things go as planned, the centerpiece of today's front page will make perfect sense. In the plan we developed last week, the Blue Jackets would win their regular-season game against Nashville last night and qualify for the playoffs, a feat accomplished just once before in franchise history.

If things go as planned, the centerpiece of today’s front page will make perfect sense.

In the plan we developed last week, the Blue Jackets would win their regular-season game against Nashville last night and qualify for the playoffs, a feat accomplished just once before in franchise history. A photo and story on Page One would be logical.

If the Jackets won or lost but didn’t qualify for the playoffs, we figured, some would wonder why we put that story on the front page.

So this column is also part of the plan — to explain our thinking before the emails start to arrive. Because if the team didn’t make the playoffs, and if history is a predictor of the future, my in-box will be peppered with questions.

This column is being written on Friday morning. The Insight section goes on the presses at 6:30 p.m. on Saturdays, about 30 minutes before the puck dropped at Nationwide Arena. We have to print the Sunday paper in groups of sections because of the number of papers we print and because there are so many pages and sections in the Sunday edition.

As we began planning this Sunday edition on Tuesday (our standard planning day for the weekend, because the edition contains our most-extensive work), we discussed how best to report on the Jackets’ final game.

The choice appeared obvious if they won and made the playoffs. But what if the miracle season came up short?

We briefly debated using the game as our centerpiece if the Blue Jackets won but substituting something else if they lost. But given the time of the game (it should end at about 9:30 p.m.) and its proximity to our copy deadline (10:30 p.m.), swapping out centerpieces with potentially different story lengths and photo sizes across a number of pages was problematic. We don’t want to risk delaying home delivery.

Logistics aside, we reasoned that the Jackets’ remarkable regular season alone is worthy of the front page — win or lose. This team was not expected to compete for a playoff position but battled for contention in the last quarter of the strike-shortened season.

The team’s playoff push energized the city and injected life into the Arena District, with thousands of fans coming Downtown to attend games. This group of hard-charging men was exciting to watch and easy to root for.

Some cynics might suggest that the hockey package was prominent because the newspaper’s owner, The Dispatch Printing Company, owns part of the team. It owns about 10 percent of the team, but that has no bearing on news decisions.

Win or lose, the culmination of this surprise season belonged on Page One.

• • •

Many readers have weighed in on the story about the firing of a Bishop Watterson High School teacher for revealing in an obituary that she is gay.

The topic is polarizing.

Carla Hale’s supporters say it is immoral and, possibly, illegal for the Catholic school to have fired her for her sexual orientation. Her detractors say she should have been fired for violating her contract by being immoral, at worst, and publicizing the fact she has a partner, at best.

A few readers wrote and called on Friday to complain that Dispatch editorial cartoonist Nate Beeler used Bishop Watterson’s name in his drawing and not the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus, because the diocese fired her.

In my view, Beeler was correct to include Watterson because that is where Hale worked for 19 years. She was a physical-education teacher at the Clintonville school, not at diocesan offices.

Some of you have accused us, and me in particular, of an anti-Catholic bias for covering this story so closely.

First, we’re not pro- or anti-anybody; we just cover news. And, as an aside, I am Catholic.

We’re covering the story because it is interesting news and raises questions about the functions of a major institution in our community. It also allows people to have an open discussion about values.

Benjamin J. Marrison is editor of The Dispatch. You can read his blog at dispatch.com/blogs.

bmarrison@dispatch.com

@dispatcheditor

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